PARAMEDICINE WORKFORCE ACROSS AUSTRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND
With
Associate Professor Liz Thyer
Associate Professor in Paramedicine
Western Sydney University, Australia
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia | March 2026
Liz Thyer is an Associate Professor in the Western Sydney University Paramedicine program and is passionate about innovations and excellence in health sciences teaching and learning.
She was an advanced life support paramedic with Ambulance Victoria for 11 years including roles as a clinical instructor and peer support officer. She has previously worked at Victoria University with the Paramedic programs and at Deakin University in Learning Futures.
She is an active member of the Australasian College of Paramedicine and is the inaugural chair of the ACP Professional Standards Committee and Education Committee.
Her PhD was in physical anthropology, highlighting a continuing passion for anatomical studies, but her more recent research and HDR supervision focuses on the fields of health education, mental health, and paramedicine workforce issues.
She is the chief investigator of the Australasian Paramedicine Workforce Survey, a three-year study providing the most comprehensive data exploring trends affecting the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand paramedicine workforce.
Source: Supplied
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Targeting chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer patients
Dr Alex Cole, from the Centenary Institute’s Centre for Biomedical AI, is now leading the research focused on developing a new treatment to counteract a protein called follistatin (FST), known for making ovarian cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy.
By employing cutting-edge molecular biology and directed evolution techniques, the project aims to create nanobodies—small, precise molecules—that can block FST. If successful, these nanobodies could enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy and improve ovarian cancer treatment rates.
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Infections and other lung diseases using models of human lung tissue grown from stem cells
Dr Rhiannon Werder is a Team Leader at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute leading a multidisciplinary team, combining expertise in stem cell biology and immunology, to develop new therapies for lung diseases. Her research centres around induced pluripotent stem cells to investigate respiratory diseases, spanning acute respiratory infections to chronic lung diseases. Using stem cells, Dr Werder’s team creates models of human lung tissue. With these models, Dr Werder is investigating how human-specific pathogens infect different regions of the lung, the ensuing immune responses, and how the lung repairs itself after infections, especially in people with preexisting lung diseases.
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Engineering bacteria to detect colorectal cancer cells
An international team of researchers from Adelaide and the United States has engineered bacteria capable of detecting mutated DNA released from colorectal cancer cells, opening the door to faster disease detection.
